The Algorithm Fails to Find Itself.

Gah.

Less "gah-" and more "wtf?-" worthy is the soccerball we found wedged in between the Wa and Mu portion of my bank's sign. This one found in Woodhaven, Queens, after an excessive yarn buying binge. Crazy sales, I tell ya!

There, he dreamt I was an architect...

I was supposed to be in Canada tonight but a "broken airplane" grounded me here, so I took the chance for a wee saunter to the East Village with a few of the other marsupials. It's unseasonably warm today - over 20C!! - and it was still pleasant and balmy by nighttime. We did a tour of 1st, 2nd and 3rd aves, visiting the lovely Otafuku, purveyor of takoyaki, and trying our new favourite again - Caracas, the areparía on 7th st. between 1st Av and Avenue A.

As on my first visit, the tiny space was crowded and warm, but we managed to snag the same corner table and from that cosy nook devour light and delicious treats. An arepa, for those who haven't yet experienced its delights, is a griddle-fried corn flatbread stuffed with delightful treats - most classically cheese. But the possibilities are endless. On the first visit I shared a plain white-cheese Paisa; and a Playera, a fabulous combination of fish, tomato, herbs and a bit of cheese into a moist and toothsome morsel vanishing far too fast. This time I tried la del Gato, which had guayanés cheese, fried plantains, and avocado slices. And it was delicious! Even more delicious was a sauce on the table which I tried to parse into its component parts. For now I'm guessing olive oil & vinegar (ciderish?), mustard, thyme/oregano, chile powder, and passionfruit juice... With all this I had a fantastic refresco of papaya, not too strong or sweet but with real pieces of fruit gently suspended in it, and a hit of citrus. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm....

But the funniest thing that happened was, after we peered into the cute little ramen place we found recently on 3rd Av, and then sauntered bravely on, I heard a man's voice persistently calling, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" Confident that I hadn't dropped anything, and tired of street harassment, I carried on undaunted. But the unstoppable man persisted, finally running up and actually grabbing my arm to get my attention.

"Excuse me," he said, holding my arm just above the elbow. "Are you an architect?"

"No," I replied flatly. And he dropped my arm and faded away, back to the bar patio from whence he had so urgently sought me. We marched on, wondering. Did he mistake me for someone famous, whose name he couldn't quite remember? Did he urgently need a consultation on his bathroom fixtures? Did he and his tablemate bet each other they could pick an architect at 40 paces? I fear I shall never know.

And we walked into the night.

Pachinko & friends.

Today was a work day, with trains, Thai food at lunch, and many other things starting with "t", but most especially teatime. A coworker, Neko-chan, had brought in special green tea, so we sat around with an assortment of biscuits and had one of those conversations. It all started with a lovely CNN story title, "Gay Sex Immoral".

Well, duh, we already knew you thought that.

But really, ugh!

Anyway, our conversation fluttered from there to marriage rights in different countries, to Pachinko, the Japanese gambling game, to the Atomic Squid's glasses. As long as there was fresh water for the teapot you could not keep that conversation down!

And on the way home we stopped on the East Village and this time successfully had arepas, on which more later. I love the East Village.

Lost and not found.

Something else depressing: the Gowanus Canal.

Today I realised I had lost something important, and more than the frustration of the loss was the feeling of fearful inevitability - that if I could have let this happen, what other terrible things would I do? What I lost was blue, as was the day.

However as the sky darkened I went for a long walk in the neighbourhood and out to the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, and watching Manhattan sparkling in the not-very-distance, was soothing, as was eating leftover fish porridge and curling up in bed.

La Marqueta: An Afternoon in Williamsburg

The Atomic Squid, avid reader of the Brooklyn blogs, discovered a Hispanic market in Williamsburg that is sadly slated to close, so before it could, we wanted to sneak out there and sample the wares.

We hopped on a G and soon emerged into a bustling area where Spanish was being spoken everywhere. We wended our way along to a small closed market area, similar to the Essex St Market we stumbled into a week before, only quite a bit smaller. There were a lot of empty stalls; either Sunday is not a big day or people have already started to close down. Still it was interesting to see what supplies there were, and what was there was SO CHEAP! At one stall we got a big bag of garlic, a big bag of achiote, a bit container of homemade sofrito, and two gooey coconut sweets, for a total of $5!! From what I could tell the stalls were mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican owned.

Then we perused the snack counters considering having some fried yuca or other comida típica, but settled in the end on a batido, for it was sunny and who can resist a batido? We even learned a dialect word - parcha is apparently the same as maracuya, otherwise known as passionfruit. We shared a parcha batido and a papaya one, both delicious. The parcha was tangy and the papaya sweet and creamy and we both preferred it, though the parcha was also delicious. And I got to order them in Spanish!

After that we wandered north on Avenida de Puerto Rico to Grand St and considered late brunch options, despite being fairly full of batido at this point. I had to cower in fear in front of one place, which had a billboard out front declaiming: "Wombat! We want YOU for brunch!"

Of course, the place was called Wombat.

Anyway despite the excitement there, we decided to go to Bahía, a Salvadoran resto also on Grand St. So of course we had to have pupusas - a bean one, and this delicious one with Loroco, the flower of a salvadoran plant that tasted vaguely like broccoli. As usual this was served with pickled cabbage, and a delicious thin, mild tomato salsa. The texture of the pupusas was a little less crisp than some I had had but the flavours were nice. We also had a side of casamiento, or rice and beans, and a little condiment-salad called chirmol, with chopped tomatoes and radishes etc. And I finally tried a tamal de elote, or sweet corn tamale. It was perhaps a little sweet - not that different to a steamed cornbread - but it was nice to try it eventually.

By this time the Williamsburg adventure was winding down, but on the way to the subway we stopped at the landmark Gimme Coffee! which is supposed to be Brooklyn's best. Certainly the coffee was good and the descriptive labels on the (expensive!) beans amusingly hipsterish. But as with so many cafés in this country - only disposal cups! For shame.

There were more wonders to be revealed in this tour of Williamsburg, but for now this shall suffice. It's a nice place to visit, but I'm happy enough to return to my little corner of South Brooklyn. To do laundry...

Day 156: Sviata Vechera!

A new tradition, a new foray into food we don't really understand but want to eat anyway: Sviata Vechera 2007!

Or, in translation, our version of a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve Supper, where "we" are the Figtree denizens + the AS' brother, The Curator, and me. Held on Jan 6 because of calendar shifts, the meal traditionally has 12 dishes and is a solemn, mystical affair you can read more about here: http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/holidays/christmas/ukraine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve-dish_Christmas_Eve_supper

Our version had a few fewer dishes and a lot less solemnity, but was tasty and exciting nonetheless.

We started off with a joint Fairway expedition to stock up, plus some provisions I had brought specially from Canada, and the delightful bread dough The Curator had made in advance. Once back in the kitchen, we lost no time in shaping this fine dough, destined for kolach, or the traditional round braided bread gracing the table with a red candle atop it (see below).

Our fingers were busy throughout with many details, from the Atomic Squid's cabbage rolls lovingly tied together with chives, to the irregularly-but-lovingly-shaped pyrohy brought into being by the paws of one yours wombat truly.

The final menu consisted of the traditional first course of kutia, wheat berries cooked with honey and poppy seeds, heavy with symbolism I'm a little fuzzy on, but thankfully also rather delicious. We tried to keep the portions small out of initial skepticism and the many dishes to follow, but in fact everyone asked for seconds! *a decorous cheer*

Following the kutia we had a nice bowl of borscht, made vegetarian as is traditional for this meal, which should have fish but no meat or other animal fats (we did cheat and include butter in some dishes). There were several beetroot skeptics in the assembled audience, but the deeply pink soup was well received by all, especially with its garnishes of sour cream, fresh dill and chives. The photo doesn't show off how lovely the garnishes actually were, but hey, we were hungry!

After the borscht, the main courses together. First, there was a very Ukrainian, er, Southeast Asian style fish baked in a banana leaf. There were actually two fishes, one red snapper and one porgy, although in fact the poor porgy was passed over as our straining stomachs protested its unwrapping. These were stuffed with a mixture of the Atomic Squid's devising, involving lime, leek, tomato, lemongrass, and other exciting flavours - in fact it might have been the most exquisitely flavoured fish I have ever had.

The fish had plenty of company. For something a little more Eastern European there was some nice pickled herring, as well as the aforementioned cabbage rolls. They had a rice stuffing and were baked in a tomato-eggplant stew, to great tastiness. The traditional meal is accompanied by many vegetable sides, represented here by some sautéed mushrooms and some simply beautiful kale in garlic and a bit of veggie stock.

The (in my mind at least) essential element was the pyrohy or perogies - two flavours of them. One was a plain potato mash, but with roasted garlic for a full flavour, and the other was plain mash with a considerable quantity of orange cheddar grated into it - I confess these are my favourite. Vareniki are the boiled version, and then some of these were taken and pan-fried to a slight crispiness before being served with sour cream and fried onions.

All this inhaled in company with generous slices of the beautiful kolach. Kolach by itself would make a festive meal. It's similar to both challah and brioche but has a particular texture and rich flavour all its own.

After all this we had to take a break, wherein The Curator was initiated into the Revolutionary Knitters' Circle and also the Fanatical Watchers of Kath and Kim Club (an excellent Australian sitcom). Amid all the excitement we were able to worry down some dessert - a traditional dried fruit compote made with honey by the Grand Pademelon, and the utterly nontraditional key lime pie made by Steve (on which more later), before dispersing to our diverse locations and collapsing on our beds to relive Sviata Vechera in our dreams. It was quite a few hours of work and I felt a bit guilty for not having researched it more thoroughly, but however inauthentic it was a truly festive meal. And then there were the leftovers... :-)

Day 155: Distraction of the day.

I think we can all feel good about the fact that this week was a short work week and it's over now :P To celebrate we got pizza from Zaytoons and flaked out in front of the Figtree tv. I don't have photos of that, but here's lunch to celebrate with instead :-)

Day 154: Let's talk about something more pleasant.

Than my ongoing boring work and sick state. Let me distract you all with photos of tasty food, here some nice buckwheat soba with mushrooms and green onions. Mm. Noodles.

Day 153: I am ze crafty one now!

Still at work, still sick. But on the bright side, I finished knitting this fine hat!

Day 152: Back to work.

Back to work. Still sick. But on the bright side, I get to eat this noodle soup. And it has tentacles! Go, Atomic Squidlet!

Day 107: Ham Day

The little neighbourhood farmers' market at the Borough Hall Plaza, seen from a bench as we nibble on a breakfast of cider doughnuts.

No, I haven't devegetarianised. But today Pseudonyme and I took part in an ancient and storied tradition for the first time - that of New York Pre-Thanksgiving Ham Day.

First of all though, we had a lovely food-centric day in my neighbourhood. On one of my pre-work dowsing-for-farmers'-markets mornings, I had stumbled across one such in the Borough Hall plaza not far from home. I later discovered it ran Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, but had never gone on a weekend. Anyway the weekend affair is somewhat larger and was full of lovely root vegetables and greens, apples and apple products and a number of bread and baking stalls. We perused, nibbled on some cider doughnuts, and finally made our choices, including some lovely leeks, some tiny flavourful grapes, and lashings of hardy roots. And some toothsome rugelach...

After this we headed over to Sahadi, as any right-thinking person would, as early and often as possible. It had been at least a month since I had been in, and it was more crowded than I had ever seen it. A Middle-Eastern food store that seems to carry everything,...we love Sahadi. As does everyone else, because when I went in and took the number 49 in order to order bulk goods, they were only serving number 9. Luckily there is plenty to divert one in the long wait.

When it was at last my turn, I was greeted by the extremely warm and friendly attentions of a man who hailed me as a regular who has been gone for too long. Extremely warm and friendly. But hey, I'm not going to object to being called "my love" and having extra handfuls of chocolate covered whatevers tipped in to my hand to sustain me for the long arduous wait...(note to self, must go back and buy some of those chocolate covered toffee encrusted pistachios, they were fantastic). After promising to come back soon, we made our purchases and departed.

The rest of the day passed in pleasant Brooklyn pursuits. We joined some people from work in brunch at the cuban cafe on Smith St., then wandered around participating in a little tour for the visitors. Then later, on the way home, we dropped into one of the many small wine stores of the area and managed to slip into a tasting of some very fine Italian wines. We loved the Barbera d'Alba and the Barolo, but the Brunello de Montalcino was the best, although alas at $54.99 we will probably never have it again. On the recommendation of the man running the tasting, who appeared to know all the winemakers personally, we got a Dolcetto that was only slightly out of our price range. We'll have to plan a meal around it.

Belatedly, we got home and I started cooking. At last, the preparation for Ham Day! Ham Day is the tradition of one of my coworkers, the Acrobat. He and his friends typically hold a dinner the weekend before American Thanksgiving, at which they cook a ham, since most people have turkey with their families on the Day Itself. I was instructed to make some sort of vegetarian dish, so I made a kind of pilaf, with basmati rice and a bunch of vegetables: leeks, oyster mushrooms, swiss chard and roasted butternut squash, tossed in a balsamic glaze. Unsurprisingly we left later than planned and had a few on-the-weekends-it's-near-impossible-to-cross-from-outerboroughs-to-Manhattan related mishaps (I should have known better) but in the end we made it up to Harlem and found his place with little difficulty.

Ham Day was quite nice, in fact. We were welcomed with enthusiasm, and while we knew no one there besides the host, managed to have a good time and eat way too much food and drink way too much wine. Pseudonyme confirmed the ham was very nice indeed, and there were lots of traditional sides to keep a vegetarian happy. Dessert might have been the highlight though - not only were there apple and pumpkin pies, chocolate chip cookies so hot from the oven we had to toss them up and down to cool them before eating, and little pastries from one of New York's innumerable Sicilian bakeries, but at one point, someone came round with a tray on which were balanced apple slices and little bowls of hot melted chocolate and cool liquid caramel. Fondue brought to one's chair!! This should happen more often.

Besides the red wine there was Prosecco and by the end we were a little overcome, but we made it safely home on the A train and curled up for a well earned rest. Ham Day is voted a success.

Day 79-95: On hiatus.

For these two weeks the blog, which is usually on unofficial hiatus anyway, is on actual hiatus, as I have two weeks off in Montréal. I may well end up posting things here and there, but there's no official New York Message until November 7th.

Meanwhile I'll be reestablishing myself in my known haunts, eating eggtarts, drinking microbrewery beer, frequenting the markets, and mostly just spending time with Pseudonyme. I feel a paean to Montréal food coming on, so I might be back here anyhow...

Day 75: Warm mouthfuls against the cool rain.

Pictured: A second course of homemade noodle soup. Not pictured: The takoyaki, which had to be devoured much too quickly to pause for posterity.

Today was a tired day of rain and lethargy. The night was interrupted by a series of bizarre yet disturbing nightmares and the morning was dim and dreary. Work passed by in a series of strange vignettes, such as a coworker coming by to "give me E.coli".

Done the workday I decided to ramble round Manhattan for a bit, as I'll be going home for a bit of a vacation and will miss the city I leave behind. Despite the rain the East Village drew me in as it always does, and despite myself I headed back to Otafuku.

Otafuku is a snack counter offering a small menu of Japanese street food, and is the sister resto to our favourite ramen bar Rai Rai Ken. It's a tiny takeout place that only has a few things on the menu. I usually get okonomiyaki (Japanese egg-pancake thing) or takoyaki, or sometimes the combo of both.

So today, in the rain, I scurried outside the restaurant and found a place on the little bench barely covered by an awning. My knees protruded and developed little cold water spots immediately. I could see my breath.

Meanwhile, the takoyaki. Six plump little balls of fried dough each with a sliver of octopus in them. I don't usually eat octopus anymore, after an unfortunate incident where I overidentified with the poor creature and nearly passed out in a Portuguese restaurant. However, in a wholly morally inconsistent move I make an exception for takoyaki. The outside of each ball is very crisp, baked in a muffin-tin-shaped griddle. The inside is still gooey and soft and molten hot, and the centre is a chewy piece of purple octopus. You can get them plain or with cheese, but it's not the same. Atop is a squirt or two of brown sauce, another of mayo, crumpled nori and liberal chopstickfuls of fluffy bonito flakes.

Everything around me is cold. The takoyaki are steaming. One bite into the scaldingly hot, crisp, soft, chewy, sweet, salty, creamy ball and I'm both intensely present and miles away, even if there's still rain falling on my knees. Mmm. Takoyaki.

Day 74: And apple cores all in a row.

Pictured: A cluster of apple cores. Below, some tasty little turnovers, perfect for clutching in a small wombat paw for eating on the train.

Monday never smelled so sweet as when working from home. Ah. Today was a beautiful day of working and getting errands done and feeling good to be alive. Doing laundry, finding the late-open post office, spending most of the day in pyjamas.

But mostly it was a day of reckoning, where a goodly number of all those yesterday-picked apples met their maker. Me, that is, maker of an apple crisp, two apple pies, six apple turnovers, and a few cinnamon snails for good measure. The pleasures of domesticity cannot be overrated, especially not when they involve as much butter and flour and fruit as this evening did.

Day 73: Apple picking!

A little tiny apple. I think it might be a Jonathan, but we're not sure.

Today we, even we, went apple-picking.

We set out not so bright and early from our burrow, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed were we not, but we got there in the end.

There, being Terhune Orchards near Princeton, NJ. We thought to find a small orchard less overrun with New Yorkers than the nearer-by ones, so at first we were shocked to see a place swarmed with adults and kiddies, picking out pumpkins, petting pack animals, etc other-things-starting-with-P. Once we figured out that this was not the apple picking venue, we stood "on" line for apple cider donuts with the rest before making our escape. (Actually we also took the time for a little trip through the educational funhouse type thing which took us through the earth's crust, and underneath a tuber's eye view of some lovely potatoes, formed of pantyhose).

The orchard, while by no means deserted by Canadian standards, was pretty empty for New York ones. We were a bit late in the season, and the apples we were most interested in tasting were more or less gone, so we had to scavenge. But it was a beautiful day for the scavenging and we were nothing loath.

After all the scavenging and lugging exhausted us, we trekked back to Princeton for lunch near the seat of privilege, and then it was home for some poor tired marsupials. But never fear, the apple saga continues...

Pictured right, one long coil of apple thanks to an ingenious machine; left, a crumpled heap of tired scavengers amidst the endless rows of apple tree.

Day 56: We Intellectual-ise, somewhere Off Broadway.

Pictured: A deconstructed sfogliatella. Less palatable than the evening's intellectualising.

Today my manager told me what I already knew. Sigh. I and others attempted to protest and it was interpreted as acquiescence. But then again, it's not like there's choice involved. Sigh again. Don't worry, I haven't been fired. I just like to be cryptic.

Anyway, on to better things. I had spotted this play that looked pretty interesting and so the other marsupials and I had talked of going. But things as they are, we didn't make any advance plans. Be that as it may, fatigue, colds, and lastminutenessbeingadangerincrowdedmanhattanness notwithstanding, the Atomic Squid and I set out undaunted into that tall, noisy, crowded Midtown.

The play we were to attend was in the Workshop Theatre, a small blackbox theatre on the 4th floor of some downtown building, not far from Madison Square Garden. It's a pretty cool place -- they carry productions through the initial workshop-scripty stages to the final production, with support at all levels, hence the name. Also it was the first indie-ish thing I've seen in Manhattan, in shiny corporate Midtown especially. It reminded me very much of small theatres in Vancouver, except of course the not-having-any-connections part :P

When we got there they weren't sure there would be tickets available, so we put our names on a waiting list and tried our luck. We figured it wouldn't be time wasted anyway since the people watching was quite fun - arty types, society types, grubby student types (we counted ourselves among the latter, at least we looked like them). In the end we did get seated and popped into the theatre just as the show started.

Intellectuals was a highly entertaining screwball comedy type thingo that played with a bunch of stereotypes. The basic premise is that a woman decides to leave her longstanding marriage and "become a lesbian", with hijinks galore following from there. Think Midsummer's Night's Dream after Puck's spell. We did feel that the play lacked a bit of heart - as the A.S. pointed out, it was very mannered, which worked extremely well in the funny bits, but was a bit less convincing in the serious parts. In addition, the supporting characters were extremely well done and the leads perhaps a little less so. However, there were one-liners galore, including some references to Canadian filmmaking that left me especially happy, and we spent most of the 2 hours chortling away. An excellent venture into the wild world of New York theatre.

Then we popped down to the East Village for a quick bowl of ramen and a dissection of the evening before heading back to Brooklyn, home, and bed.

Day 55: Conspiracy theories.

Today was just another day in the office. With the added bonus that all the paranoid rumours we had been hearing lately were finally confirmed. Somehow office gossip always finds itself last to the people it properly concerns....anyway, our team spent most of the afternoon in little huddles exchanging snippets of information and lashings of griping. I still don't know what the changes are going to mean for me, and I may not know for sure for weeks...sigh. All this is very tiring.

So, the Atomic Squid and I decided to turn those frowns upside down, so we took off (relatively) early for the East Village, and ate Japanese street food, and gawked at a beautiful kosher bakery. I had just been craving rye bread, too :-) Then later we met the Grand Pademelon and four Australians and consumed many pots of steaming congee at the eponymous Lower East Side "village". Another day, another dollar, another hoping that I'm not out of a job :P

Day 54: Living the high life in Paramus, NJ.

Today was a grand day. Today I went to IKEA.

Earlier we had gone to the Elizabeth IKEA, which has only 3% tax, but is rather jammed full of people and correspondingly understocked. It's closer, so we were going to go there again this time, except there was some kind of toxic chemical spill right in the parking lot, so er, we changed our plans.

The Paramus IKEA is new and shiny and big and not as many people go to it, so we had a grand, rampagey, relaxed time. Mostly we were relaxed since we just bought everything in sight, but hey. I spent rather a lot of time diving into tall barrels of as-is stuff and came out victorious with some sheets and a pillow and a picnic cloth and such things. And I discovered the joy of the IKEA kids' meal, pictured above. A tiny bowl of overcooked mac'n'cheese and a little drink for 99c! And there's not even a height requirement like the one that keeps me out of the ballroom. Life doesn't get any classier than this, let me tell you.

Day 53: Yet Another Sad Farewell

Pictured: aval or poha, flattened rice flakes revivified in a porridge with yogourt, banana, and a bit of honey.

Today Pseudonyme left. But first, we ate this nice Indian breakfast, a first for both of us. I'd rather dwell on food than partings.

Day 15: I strike out alone again, only this time to somewhere fun!

Hayou les ami(e)s,

Today was another work day, but comme quand le patron est parti, les souris prendront vacances aussi, and because I had been so tired the day before, I worked from home. It was very nice to sleep in and to work leisurely from a reclining position - something that it's advisable to do as I can't seem to raise the seat of the desk chair AND the floor is at a considerable slope. So to sit at the desk I need to reach up like a child for a cookie jar, and clench numerous muscle groups in order to not go sliding right into the closet. Good exercise perhaps, but not exactly correct in the matter of ergonomics.

Anyhow, I benefitted from the working from home thing to go for a stroll and meet the Atomic Squid on a peaceful courtyard for a bit, but once the workday was done I determined to do something a bit more ambitious, to use up that energy that the commute hadn't devoured. So I headed out into that good evening.

In the end I decanted myself in Greenwich Village and ambled about pleasantly without really knowing where I was going, but eventually more or less orienting myself. It was rather nice I must say to be wandering around somewhere where everyone was gay - doesn't happen too often. At first it made me quite happy and then later sad, thinking how rare it is to feel safe being out and unselfconscious. But better a few places than none. And hey, not getting hit on while walking in a public place wearing summer clothes! What a treat!

My undirected ramblings ended up taking me to the hitherto unknown to me Hudson River Park, a series of little jetties protruding into the well, Hudson River. There was a beautiful sunset sinking into the less-than-beautiful Jersey skyline, it was a pleasant temperature with a cool breeze, there was some informal acoustic guitar show going on singing at that point, Mrs. Robinson. Life was good.

Back into the urbanity, I got turned around a few times (all these triangulated streets!) but ended up successfully heading into the Lower East Side and the small triangle of Japantown: destination Sunrise Market, where I could marvel at all the fancy little food packets, and buy myself a cup I would actually enjoy drinking my morning coffee from. Success: a little lime-green handleless one. Then, even though I had been going to be good and actually cook at home, I had been rambling for hours and was rather hungry, so I stopped at Otafuku for some okonomiyaki. Ah, the wonder that is Japanese street food. Mm. And so home, to the computer, and to bed. The weekend!